BarChef (21 W. 35th Street), which just opened summer 2025, is one of New York City’s most dynamic new additions to the cocktail scene.
BarChef NYC / Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
From the third floor of a reimagined Midtown space, BarChef New York serves its cocktails against a classic New York backdrop. Through the bar’s retractable glass roof, the Empire State building towers overhead. Here, cocktails are presented as sculptural dioramas in flavor and form.
Often, mini clouds of fog drift across its counters due to one of its popular menu items, an Illuminated Eucalyptus, rich in rum, tequila, fir cream, and white chocolate. Another featured drink, the Spring Thaw, is presented in a thicket of flowers and herbs, and tastes of citrus and chamomile. It’s theater at table scale. But in Midtown, theater comes at a price, with drink prices ranging from $22 to $43.
Illuminated Eucalyptus by BarChef
Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
Spring Thaw at BarChef
BarChef NYC / Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
BarChef’s New York outpost opened in June, and is the first international outpost for the acclaimed Toronto destination named one of the most innovative bars in the world by Food & Wine. For founder Frankie Solarik and his team, New York is an opportunity to stage cocktails as experiences (part drink, part performance) compressing dinner and a show into a single glass.
“[BarChef’s] cocktails are immersive, multisensory experiences designed to engage not just the palate, but sight, smell, texture, and emotion,” says BarChef’s Culinary Director Lionel Duke. “By crafting every element in-house, from infusions and bitters to essential oils and garnishes, we maintain complete creative control and push the boundaries of flavor and presentation.”
Golden Honey Penicillin by Barchef
Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
As a result cocktails are designed around emotion as much as flavor. Take the Golden Honey Penicillin, described on the menu as “encapsulating the essence of sunshine.” It delivers by using ingredients that read more like dessert: beeswax-infused Jonnie Walker Black Label, ginger and lemongrass syrup, toasted chamomile and saffron bitters, roasted corn cannoli, turmeric-saffron ice, and burnt honey sherbet. A mouthful.
The Rose Gold Margarita
Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
The Rose Gold Margarita features pequin pepper–infused tequila and hibiscus Campari deliver heat and floral sharpness, tempered by roasted agave. The tastes of summer are of course making way for autumnal flavors, with the Essence of Fall brings the the aromatics of cedar, moss and soil, but the flavors of brandy, rosemary syrup and orange blossom.
Essence of Fall by BarChef
Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
For Solarik, these are less drinks than narratives. “My goal with the guest experience and mixology as a whole has always been to provide an emotional experience,” he says. “We go beyond the idea of simply consuming a cocktail out of a glass and instead explore immersive design elements and details that create visceral, lasting impressions.”
BarChef is designed for intimate seating and sipping.
Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
The New York space supports that philosophy without distraction. Spanning 3,200 square feet with just 82 seats, BarChef was designed for intimacy. The “modernist kitchen counter” offers a front-row seat to the assembly process: balsam fir cream whisked to order, torched grapefruit peel releasing citrus oils, edible petals positioned with tweezers. Solarik often begins with an image or texture and works backward into technique.
Frankie Solarik founder of BarChef Toronto and NYC.
Courtesy of Leanne Solarik
BarChef’s rigor is rooted in Solarik’s experience. Starting behind the bar at 18, he moved between kitchens and cocktail programs worldwide, developing a method that borrows as much from pastry and modernist cuisine as from classical bartending. His technique and personal library of house-made infusions, foams, and essential oils reflects influences from Grant Achatz to Massimo Bottura, blending storytelling, sensory layering, and presentation.
Along the way, he authored The Bar Chef: A Modern Approach to Cocktails and served as a judge on Netflix’s Drink Masters, bringing his expertise—and exacting standards—to a global audience.
The New York project came together with Duke, who crafted the bar’s complimentary Japanese-inspired dishes, and restaurateurs Mino Habib and Mathias VanLeyden. Alongside Michael Greenberg, they adapted BarChef’s Toronto model into a Midtown footprint with minimal renovation. The resulting space was completed in six months and balances precision with comfort: dark, luxe surfaces and low, moody lighting create intimacy, while the glass roof opens to the sky, folding the city skyline into the bar’s mise-en-scène.
In the fast pace of Midtown, BarChef stands out by slowing the experience down. Each cocktail rewards time and attention, turning a drink into an experience.
“The intention with our approach,” Solarik says, “is to guide the guest into completely rethinking the possibilities of the cocktail genre.”
BarChef New York is located at 21 W. 35th Street, New York, NY 10018